The Hanceville City Council approved an ordinance Thursday night allowing the draconian measure of ‘intercepting’ city residents’ Alabama State individual tax refund monies to pay down debts owed to the City of Hanceville.

Deadbeat residents, financially infirm citizens, city dwellers temporarily down on their luck, or anyone with outstanding City fees, taxes, utilities and other debts will potentially face such interception going forward.

This Municipal Intercept Services Program (MIS) program is a legislatively sanctioned conduit with the Alabama Department of Revenue (ADOR) that enables ADOR to recover delinquent debts owed by individuals to municipalities by collecting this debt from the individual’s Alabama state tax refund.

MIS is NOT a debt collection agency.

This organization goes above and beyond what any debt collection agency offers. MISP can seize portions of your income through taking all, or a part, of your annual state tax refund.

This handy system of debt collection by municipalities is forced debt repayment via legislative fiat.

This system was made possible by an Alabama legislative change enacted in 2014 through which ADOR agreed to process these debts through only two clearinghouse organizations: the Alabama League of Municipalities (ALM) for municipal entities and the Association of County Commissions of Alabama (ACCA) for county entities. In 2015, ALM formed MIS to act as the clearinghouse on behalf of its municipal entities.

If you are a municipality that has uncollectable debts on the books (such as Hanceville), MISP is a potentially helpful tool recouping losses to the operational bottom line.

If you are a broke City resident with outstanding municipal debts, congratulations! Refunds you may be expecting from your Alabama state tax return may be seized and deducted from your delinquent city account(s), whether you can afford it, or not.

Originally from Asheville, NC, Timothy brings an insightful holistic perspective as well as a mountain man tenacity to his various roles at Cullman Today. You can reach him at cullmantoday@gmail.com and/or (256) 615-8260.